


The End of All Roads

by Molly



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-21
Updated: 2010-08-21
Packaged: 2017-10-11 04:42:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/108525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Molly/pseuds/Molly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and Dean, when all their work is done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The End of All Roads

**Author's Note:**

  * For [de_nugis](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=de_nugis).



> Many thanks to Terri, for on-demand beta service. :)
> 
> This is for de_nugis, for proving she could totally pick me out of a line-up. Though her impression that the prompt _Sam/Dean. Potential fight that turns silly and ends in laughing and maybe kissing_ might be too schmoopy for me proves that my air of mystery remains at least partially intact. =) This is probably not quite what you were expecting, and it starts with a kiss rather than ending with one. But I hope you enjoy it, all the same!

Dean wakes up on his back, on the ground, staring up at a cloudless sky with the taste of time and dust in his mouth. It's the tail end of a kiss he never asked for, and when he turns his head and sees her, he groans and slams his fist into the earth.

"Fucking _hell_," he says, "I knew this job was bad news, I fucking knew it." He takes her hand and lets her help him up; she's strong, and he's incorporeal, so it works. Her eyes are as solemn and deep as ever, windows on the calm of ages inside her, but there's a glint of amusement in there, too. He's seen it before. She's laughing at him. "Seriously?"

"Sorry," she says, her mouth curving in a heart-stopper of a smile.

"Why does it always have to be _you_?"

Tessa shakes her head. "I ask myself the same question every time."

"I'm not going. I'm not kidding this time. I have friends in high places."

"Who do you think sent me, Dean?"

She always seems so nice; that's the worst part. Dean likes her. Aside from that whole impersonating a dead girl thing, which they got over pretty quick, she's never lied to him. It's not something he can say about most people in his life, even the ones he loves best. This, though, this part can't be true. "Cas didn't send you," he says uncertainly.

"He asked me. He wanted it to be someone you know. Someone you trust."

"Well, it doesn't matter who it is, I'm still not going. Not without Sam." He told Sam in Stull Cemetery, _I'm not leaving you_, and now that Dean has him back, he's never going to. "I will haunt the shit out of him before I'll leave him alone down here, and there's nothing you can say to change my mind. You might as well save your breath."

If anything, Tessa's smile gets wider. She looks past him, over his shoulder, and says, "I don't think that's going to be a problem this time."

"Dean?" Sam says from behind him, confusion and wonder fighting to the death in a single word.

Dean closes his eyes and sighs. "Fucking _hell._"  


   


* * *

  
 

  
Sam remembers Tessa, so there's no need for a round of introductions. He remembers dying, too, so Dean doesn't have to break any really bad news. What Sam doesn't remember is that taking this job was all his idea to start with, and therefore, this is all his fault.

"I said we should do the poltergeist in Michigan," Dean says. "But no, you just had to see the ghost train."

"There was no poltergeist in Michigan!" Sam's glare is epic and self-righteous; in other words, his default expression. "There was a pissed off teenager with a grudge against her step-mom, and unless you've got some kind of counseling degree I don't know about --"

"Maybe it wasn't a poltergeist, but if we'd gone to check it out, we wouldn't be having this conversation on the outside of our bodies, Sam!"

"It's not my fault you wouldn't get off the tracks--"

"--and _leave you there_?" Dean gapes at his brother, both astounded and impressed at the depth of his stupidity; he didn't think Sam had it in him. "That was never going to happen."

"Boys?"

"You distracted me," Sam says, his mouth fixed in a thin, stubborn line. "I would have gotten loose."

"Sure, Houdini, about five minutes after it turned you into Winchester jam--"

"Well, now we're both jam, congratulations!"

"Boys!" Tessa steps between them, a hand on each of their chests. "Kind of irrelevant at this point. You're both dead. And I'm on a schedule. Time for you to go into the light."

"Look." Dean pitches his voice warm and low. "I get it, we've been here a few times before. You're a reaper, you want to... reap me." He pops his eyebrows at her, leering; Sam's face takes on a sour, pinched look. "I mean, who wouldn't, right? But me and Sam, we kind of saved the world a couple years ago. I think we're a little above your pay grade these days."

"Castiel said you'd say that."

Dean drops the leer. "He did not."

"He said to tell you if you want to get into Heaven, you should quit while you're ahead."

Okay, that actually sounded like something Cas would say. "I'm not that bad," he says, "am I?"

"You're sleeping with your little brother," Sam points out. "Like, a lot."

"Sam!" Dean jerks his head at Tessa. "Ixnay on the incestyay!"

Sam rolls his eyes. "She's your personal reaper, dude. You think she doesn't know?"

"She knows, Dean," Cas says, as if he'd been there all along and only now felt the need to contribute to the discussion. With no expression whatsoever, he manages to convey both affection and exasperation. "_Everybody_ knows." Dean gives him the meanest look in his arsenal, and opens his mouth to pair it with a little pointed blasphemy, but Cas isn't even looking at him anymore. His eyes are on Sam, filled with what looks suspiciously like pity. In a voice filled with infinite grace and kindness, he says, "It's not too late to request a separate Heaven."

Dean narrows his eyes. He really, really wants to punch him.

And the hell of it is, Sam looks like he's thinking about it. Dean folds his arms across his chest and waits, ticking off the seconds in his head, because if they do this thing he's gonna make Sam suffer for a year, for each one.

"Thanks," Sam says finally. "But somebody's got to keep him from wrecking the place." He gives Dean a smile out of the corner of his mouth, eyes clear and warm, and maybe he's laughing at Dean, too, but it's a laugh Dean loves, a laugh he can live with.

Or, you know, die with, if it comes to that. And it's starting to look like it has.

"Always said we'd go out young and bloody." Dean grins at Sam; maybe it's a stupid thing to be smug about, but when he's right, he likes to make it count. He looks at Cas, who's standing there like a peaceful statue of himself, trench coat fluttering in the light fall breeze. "This is the last time, right? No take-backs. Over and out?"

Cas smiles. "You've more than earned it."

Dean nods, unable to speak around the swell of pride rising in his chest. He turns to Tessa, who's looking way more smug than a timeless reaper of souls has any right to, and gives her a small nod. In the empty space beside her a break in the world is growing, deep and bright. Dean looks at it, and feels it looking back at him; then he looks at Sam.

Sam, who's loved him through everything, who always comes back to him, who deserves peace more than anybody Dean's ever known. Dean reaches out a hand, and Sam takes it without hesitation, linking their fingers together like their lives have always been.

"You ready?" Sam asks.

Dean twists Sam's arm up behind his back and gives him a gentle shove toward the light. "You first, Carol Ann."  
~  
Feedback cherished, as always!


End file.
